Gallic Books

I've just read about this new publisher on Susan Hill's blog. Gallic Books is bringing 'the best of French into English'.

From their website:

Gallic Books is a new publishing house dedicated to bringing contemporary French authors to the UK market.

At Gallic we feel there’s a lot of good French writing that deserves a British audience and our aim is to showcase the best.

Our launch list focuses on best-selling historical crime, a very popular genre on both sides of the Channel. The first two titles appearing in May 2007 are "The Chatelet Apprentice" by Jean-François Parot and "Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner. Further crime and mystery follow in the autumn and early next year.

Gallic Books was founded by Managing Director, Jane Aitken, working with Editorial Director, Pilar Webb. Colleagues for many years at Random House UK, they are both committed francophiles.

The following two titles are out on the 15th May:

The brand-new Eiffel Tower is the glory of the 1889 Universal Exposition. But one day a woman collapses and dies on its second floor. Can a bee-sting really be the cause of death? Enter young bookseller, Victor Legris, who is determined to find out what really happened.

Claude Izner is the pseudonym of two sisters, both booksellers on the banks of the Seine, who are experts on nineteenth-century Paris.


Paris, February 1761. A police officer disappears and Nicolas Le Floch, a young Breton police recruit, is instructed to find him. When unidentified human remains are found it becomes a murder investigation. As Paris descends into Carnival debauchery it is Le Floch’s skill, courage and integrity that will help him unravel a mystery which threatens to implicate the highest in the land.

Jean-François Parot is a diplomat and historian who lives in the Loire. The Châtelet Apprentice is his first novel, and the first in a series of Nicolas Le Floch mysteries which have been published to much acclaim in French.